Delaware tried to enforce a ban on so-called “untraceable firearms” despite a 2022 injunction in Rigby v. Jennings, leading to an arrest, a guilty plea, and a Department of Justice notification to the issuing judge that the state had ignored the court order.
Delaware has long leaned anti-gun, and this episode fits the pattern of lawmaking without clear thinking. The state moved to enforce an old statute even after a federal injunction said enforcement must stop, which created a legal and practical mess.
The whole situation came into focus when authorities arrested a 17-year-old in January of last year and charged him under the affected statute. He accepted a plea to avoid incarceration for possessing an “untraceable firearm,” a charge that the injunction meant the state could not legally enforce.
At some point the Department of Justice alerted the judge who issued the injunction that the state had made an arrest tied to the barred law. That communication is the smoking gun showing the state either overlooked the injunction or simply ignored it, and that kind of oversight is unacceptable in a system of laws.
Injunctions are supposed to hit pause on enforcement while courts decide whether a law stands, but they leave the statute on the books. That gap creates confusion for prosecutors and cops, and here it turned into a prosecutorial snafu that led to a conviction on a charge with no current legal force.
The case highlights how a plea bargain can paper over a systemic problem. Instead of pursuing an enforceable charge that carried at least six months in jail for being a prohibited person, prosecutors engineered a plea on the invalid charge, which effectively amounted to paperwork rather than accountability.
Soft-on-crime approaches and sloppy law enforcement combine poorly, especially when elected officials and prosecutors treat prosecutions like administrative tasks. When someone can plead out of a meaningful charge by admitting to a law an injunction neutralized, the public gets neither clarity nor safety.
The Firearms Policy Coalition, the FPC, has shown it will not simply walk away from incidents like this, so expect litigation or challenges to follow. Regardless of whether the teen faced other viable charges, this episode looks like the product of either incompetence or a political preference to avoid tougher, enforceable prosecutions.
Beyond the individual case is a broader complaint about how northern states handle firearms policy. Lawmakers in many places keep statutes on the books that courts have effectively disabled, and prosecutors sometimes fail to adjust quickly to those judicial limits. The result is a patchwork of enforcement that undermines the rule of law and fuels predictable frustration among citizens who expect consistent application of justice.
This problem reinforces a simple Republican critique: when you make laws driven by ideology rather than evidence, you invite confusion and end up empowering prosecutors to make choices that conform to local politics rather than public safety. Charging someone under an enjoined statute is not merely an administrative oversight; it reflects a system willing to bend legal standards when convenient.
A system that allows an arrest to proceed under an injunction also forces courts and the DOJ into remedial steps they should not have to take. Judges issue injunctions to protect constitutional rights and to maintain legal order, and they should not see their orders disregarded without consequences for the officials responsible.
Finally, this episode should remind state officials to coordinate better with federal guidance and court rulings before bringing charges. If a law is paused by an injunction, prosecutors have an obligation to pursue charges that are actually on solid legal ground rather than accept easy pleas that mask systemic failures.
